Some loosely related thoughts for today:
Someone recently said that the way to tell the difference between criticism of Israeli policy and antisemitism is to watch for the froth at the corners of the speaker’s mouth.
Here is an example of a comment on a NY Times op-ed by Roger Cohen. It is chosen almost entirely at random; there are thousands more like this. The first sentence is a quote from Cohen, and the commenter has supplied the transition to antisemitic ranting:
One view of Israel’s continued expansion of settlements, Gaza blockade, West Bank walling-in and wanton recourse to high-tech force would be that it’s designed precisely to bludgeon, undermine and humiliate the Palestinian people until their dreams of statehood and dignity evaporate! This is not a view! This is official, blatant, arrogant Israeli policy since before America blundered into allowing these Zionist to steal these lands. murder these peoples, and prevent any peace in Palestine! Few of these Jews are victims or children of Nazi or even Russian atrocities; but all are dedicated Zionists with a single goal of stealing back the lands their God of blood and genocide gave to his chosen people; chosen to kill it seems!
Logic is not relevant to the special case of Israel. It’s all about hating.
By the way, have you noticed that the Nigerian army is — right now — slaughtering civilians in the Niger Delta? Or that at least 80,000 people have been killed in the 26-year Tamil Tiger intifada, which has finally been put down by the Sri Lankan army operating with little regard for collateral damage. These events are being reported, but without the ranting, and any outrage will be gone by next week.
Another phenomenon of the treatment meted out to the Jew among nations is a willingness to believe all Palestinian stories, which cannot be refuted once told, like the one that Israel bombarded a school and killed 42 innocents inside (when actually only 12 people were killed, outside the school, and 9 of them were confirmed Hamas fighters). Or the oft-quoted Palestinian figures for civilian casualties in the Strip, perhaps four times too high.
Facts, too, can be ignored in this special case. Certainly they will be next week when the ‘Eyewitness Gaza activists‘Â come to town to describe the entirely manufactured ‘siege of Gaza’.
In some ways even worse than lies about current events is the falsification of history, the deliberate attempt to wipe out Jewish provenance and rights in the land of Israel. Our rabid anti-Zionist friends eat this stuff up: the Palestinians are said to be descended from the biblical Canaanites (instead of mostly from people who migrated to the region in the 19th and early 20th centuries), there was no Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and today’s Jews are actually Khazars anyway. Sheer nonsense, but nonsense designed to erode Jewish political rights today.
A good example is the entirely unjustified Palestinian claim that any part of the land that was under Jordanian control from 1948-1967 belongs to them, and any Jewish presence there is a ‘settlement’ that must be extirpated:
…the Palestinians consider that “East Jerusalem” is also part of the “occupied territory.” That includes not only the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, but also the cemetery in Mt Olives and the Old City Jewish quarter, from which Jews were ethnically cleansed in 1948 (See Ethnic Cleansing of Jerusalem. It also includes areas that were formerly border areas and no-mans land such as the Ramat Eshkol Area. The disputes over the places where the settlement freeze applies will de facto create a consensus about what might be annexed to Israel and what belongs to the Palestinians. So we have to ask, if the Palestinians will raise a ruckus when a Jew dies and wants to be buried in Mt. Olives Cemetery, or when Israel wants to add some buildings to the Hebrew University campus on Mt. Scopus, or build in the Ramat Eshkol area or French Hill or other such neighborhoods.
More important, we should be asking if any such activities will bring down the wrath of Hillary Clinton on the Israeli government. Regarding the Palestinians, we do not have to ask, as we already know the answer. The Palestinians will fight for every millimeter that was under Jordanian sovereignty for the precious 19 years between 1948 and 1967 that in retrospect were turned into a sacrosanct period in international law. They are busy building an “alternative narrative” in which no Jews ever lived in Jerusalem prior to 1967. — Ami Isseroff
This stuff, as well as the atrocity stories and even the antisemitism, all works its way into common discourse and becomes conventional wisdom. Logic, facts and history — all three dishonored.
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As a reader of many talkbacks and responses in venues like the NY Times, Haaretz, Washington Post, Jerusalem Post et. al. I can attest to the fact that there is a great deal of frothing at the mouth. It is clear that the real haters begin with their hate and then seize upon the latest incident to mix up many different crazy stews of half- baked facts and fictions, of idiotic claims, of prejudicial propositions, of sheer ignorance. The amount of this stuff is astounding. And the amount of ‘false information’ in it is also astounding. But what I find so hard to deal with is that there is this hatred of Jews so widespread even in the most democratic nations of the world.
I don’t have a single reason for it, or a remedy for it either.
I suppose the best thing one can do is what Vic Rosenthal does on this site. i.e. search to present the facts and the truth in the most fair and non- prejudiced way possible.
I am absolutely certain that the only people who read this are those who already more or less agree with me, or at least who are pro-Israel. There is not much that can be done for the haters.
One thing that is of the greatest importance is that the IDF and the MFA do more to get the truth out about what is actually happening, especially to the foreign press. They are improving but they have a way to go. I think the Media Central people also are helping.
Now that Michael Oren is Ambassador to the US maybe he’ll do some talking — he can do it authoritatively — about the distortions of history that the Palestinians and their friends enjoy so much.
I realize that there are those who simply won’t listen, but there are too many “fashlot”.
Take heart, Vic. You are probably right in that most people to visit your site are in agreement with you but, from here those same people go all over the web and sometimes leave a link or reference or quote from your site. As an example, your most recent post on Abbas Zaki has already been to friends in China and England. Who knows where it went from there! Keep up the good work!